The Misk 500 MENA Accelerator Program held its first demo day in Riyadh on May 13, concluding the inaugural cycle, with 19 startups successfully graduating from the cohort.

The Misk 500 MENA Accelerator Program, a joint early-stage accelerator program of Misk Innovation and 500 Startups, held its first demo day in Riyadh on May 13, concluding the inaugural cycle, with 19 startups successfully graduating from the cohort.

Kicking off the program in February this year, the four-month curriculum was designed to help companies get to product-market fit, as well as prepare them to raise seed funding, with each company receiving an investment from 500 Falcons upon acceptance of the program. It also brought in more than 20 visiting mentors from San Francisco, LA, Miami, London, Bali, Canada, Portugal and Germany to offer one-to-one mentoring sessions and lectures, as well as a series of monthly Tech Talks held at Misk Foundation to discuss emerging tech as developing tool.

The cohort of startups hailed from across the MENA region including KSA, Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Palestine and UAE, and represented sectors in the agtech, e-commerce, edtech, fintech, healthtech, HR tech, security, transportation, travel/hospital and social media, with 37% of the companies having at least one female founder.

According to its release, during the program, startups experienced results including 10-200% month over month growth in revenue, achieving their stretch target goals set at the beginning of the program, and growing their customer bases from one country to five or more countries in the MENA region. To name a few, Denarii Cash achieved 200% MoM growth during the program and won the Smartpreneur competition organized by Dubai Chamber. Gathern achieved their targets and a 40% MoM growth in revenue, while Quizzito won the STEP Saudi pitch competition.

As a step towards higher growth, the demo day culminated with an opportunity to network and showcase their solutions and products to investors, mentors and ecosystem players who attended the demo day.

Here’s a quick look at the 19 graduating startups of the Misk 500 MENA Accelerator Program:

Aquaponica: An agtech B2B company providing end-to-end aquaponics solutions for farm owners, from installing and operating, through selling the produce.

CyberTalents: A B2B and B2C platform that ranks cybersecurity professionals through CTF competitions for employers to hire talent for full-time or part-time contracts.

Denarii Cash: A fintech company enabling money transfer with zero fees to send money back to their home countries.

DentaCarts: The dentists’ platform to a wide range of genuine products and premium digital services.

FAYVO: An application to share your favorite moments, books, food, fashion, products and more, all in one platform.

Gameball: A SaaS platform for instant gamification and rewards management to help website and mobile apps improve their user engagement and optimize their conversions.

Gathern: A chalet booking platform to enable people to search, book and pay online while helping chalet owners manage and list their chalets.

INNORA: A creator of life-hacking products, with its first product being the Tesh.Tesh portable bidet.

Invygo: A car subscription app to allow consumer to get a car on a monthly basis and return or exchange anytime.

Kenz: An e-commerce site selling intimate wear to the Saudi market, helping our customers find the best style for them.

P5M: An application to allow users to access gyms in the area, with one membership.

Pinoffer: A location-based ad and analytics platform to support physical stores increase sales through target ads on platforms like Facebook and Google.

Quizzito: A platform for educational centers and families to help children read books.

Sabbar: A recruitment solution for businesses in the retail and service industries.